“When he gets you in certain situations, those guys, they don’t know what’s coming,” said manager Terry Collins, complimenting Wheeler’s assortment of pitches. “They just can’t sit on one pitch.”

Wheeler (8-8) threw a career-high 120 pitches in 62⁄3 innings, allowing two runs and four hits. He walked four and hit a batter but overpowered the Cubs in winning his fifth consecutive decision.

“The big thing is trying to keep my pitch count down and I really haven’t been able to do that,” Wheeler said when talking about going deeper in games.

The Cubs entered having struck out 77 times in their previous seven games, including 16 on Thursday in a loss to Milwaukee. Five of their first six outs Friday came by the K, and they fanned 14 times overall.

Pitching with a hernia, Jenrry Mejia fanned one in a perfect ninth for his 18th save.

“We have been facing some pretty good pitching. This guy today was pretty good, too,” Cubs manager Rick Renteria said. “When you face arms like that, it happens. I thought we had a lot of really strong at-bats in terms of driving his pitch count up.”

Travis Wood (7-10) gave up three runs and four hits in 51⁄3 innings to drop to 0-5 in his last 11 starts.

The Mets rebounded from a dreadful three-game sweep at the hands of the NL East-leading Washington Nationals to beat the Central’s last-place Cubs for just the first time in four meetings between the teams this season. Chicago swept three games at Wrigley Field in June.

“We need to start playing better, there’s no doubt about it,” Campbell said.

The Cubs took a 2-0 lead in the third – the one inning Wheeler did not record a K – behind Anthony Rizzo’s run-scoring groundout and Starlin Castro’s RBI single.

Campbell hit the second homer of his career an out after Wood walked David Wright and Lucas Duda.